A Florida couple had been trying to bring their son home from Afghanistan for years. Last month, he finally made it home, just in time.

Nova Southeaster University professor Bahaudin Mujtaba was born in Afghanistan but now lives in Fort Lauderdale. He and his wife had been trying to finalize the adoption of a distant relative, Noman Mujtaba, for five years, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan and American troops evacuated. Getting 10-year-old Noman to the United States took on new urgency for the Mujtaba family.

“He’s very nervous about the situation in Afghanistan, as obviously every Afghan would be. So there’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear,” Mujtaba told NBC News in mid-August, saying that he could hear bullets firing while he spoke to Noman on the phone. “And he’s at that age where he doesn’t want to miss school. Everything is shut down right now. And that’s what the fear he was expressing to me over the phone.”

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